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The Symphony
The Symphony Why do some words impact the soul with more power than others? Why does some poetry wither us, biting, twisting our mind to horrific contortions while other poetry elevates the soul to nobility, even godhood? It’s all beats— stresses and non-stresses— a deep-seated binary that patterns the soul. Oarsmen, rowing in longboats, set the iambic tetrameter natural to my language. Their rowing was based off of their physical capabilities, off of their body composition. Poetry was made manifest in the written word, but began in their arteries, their blood, their organs. Poetry and music are transcendence, the organic rising to soul-craft. Every creature, then, has poetry bursting inside of them. Ants crawl to music. The panther hunts not because he is hungry, but because he is dancing. Nature is a song. But Nature’s music is cacophonous. Her poetry is random, each stanza based on death and pain, not art. Nature is a mess, paint splattered against a canvas without rhyme or reason. Are the shrieks and coos of a child not infinitely stronger, more beautiful, more powerful when set to the structure and dance of reason and art? Is it not the duty of parents to train their child’s tongue to organize, speak, and sing? Nature, on a near infinite number of planets, is shrieking and cooing, and we, once her child, now her parent, have a duty to tame her incoherence into song. Composers are best when they play instruments themselves. How can you best know how to tell a violinist to play if you have never held a bow? Our fleshly composition is made with fifteen notes. Different combinations bring out different melodies and harmonies. Men of science tried play melodies clearer and clearer, but without new instruments, without new forms of composition, without innovation, you only play songs louder. We must play songs with variety, changing keys and tones. Perfecting my own music was difficult. It took knowledge of constructions and fleshly forms outside of understanding found within common understandings of science or ethics. My beat remains, but the stanzas will not end. I wrote myself immortality. It was reaching this music that sent me into exile, on a ship of prisoners, destined for the planetary penal colony Droxis IV. Nature may be chaotic, but the Universe has ordered music. And by the blessed providence of the stars, pirates severely damaged the prison-bus hull, and we crashed on a planet blooming with life, screeching nature’s hoarseness. I, along with twelve other prisoners and two guards, brought the noise to order. I sung my shipmates into immortality, and we fifteen rule over this new Nature. The genetic power of this planet! Knowledge unknown to my former planet with all of its scientists, historians, and philosophers lay under that atmosphere. I have seen life unlike any other life. For hundreds of years we mastered the music of the planet. Oh the things I can create! I have built live cities, engineered intellects and warriors. Each of us fifteen command bodies of water, pulsating mountains, wildlife. We have brought Nature to order, and thus to art. With command over bodies of our own making, we have the power of gods. Godlike men are tyrants, but godlike artists? They create life. Do you know, reader, what it is like to see herds of your own cattle roaming a field, played and performed by you? Parents long for their children to be like themselves, and that noble impulse is beautiful but shortsighted. My children are unlike me. They depend on each other, sometimes even prey on each other. But I know and sing them all. The possible combinations gave us creatures beyond understanding. I have children in the trees, children in the skies, even the growths sprouting from the earth have echoes of my own song in them. I make them and direct them to the purpose of beauty. After hundreds of combinations, we all desired to grow. After all, an artist is never content. And again the ordered Universe brought us another gift. Others, warlike creatures, flew to ravage our blissful planet. They were quickly subdued, but we did not kill them. We listened to their song. We heard their music, and oh, did they sing! With new combinations and abilities we could play better, more powerful beauty. I could create like never before. It is this that has cast our fifteen heads to the stars. Now that we have adopted the harmonies and notes of those barbarians into our music, we can play out to the stars, in search of new art, in search of new flesh. If one of my creations die, it is a small matter. I have millions. They reproduce. I can sing them again. The greatest tragedy is not the death of one of my children, but the death of unpreserved life and rhythm. We will end the senseless warring between creatures and use their notes for a higher purpose: poetry! I was once called Dr. Jeremy Loft, Geneticist. Now the title seems meaningless. They now call me The Composer, and together we are The Symphony. Category:Nationbuilder IX: Stationbuilder